The invention relates generally to a fuel dispenser customer interface and, more particularly, to an interactive display system for a fuel dispenser that presents graphical data such as instructions and commercials to a customer and receives inputs from the customer.
Dispensers for gasoline and other fuels are undergoing many advances in technology. For example, modern dispensers are electrically connected to computing devices to enable a customer to pay for the fuel at the dispenser itself. Furthermore, modern dispensers have electronic displays for showing sales data, including price-per-gallon, total number of gallons dispensed, and total amount of money due as well as brief advertisements for services such as car washes.
Most modern fuel dispensers utilize small, inexpensive liquid crystal displays ("LCDs") that readily display numerals and a limited amount of text. These small LCDs are ideally suited to display sales data, as well as to advertise some services. Recently, electronic displays for new fuel dispensers have been designed with larger graphics displays that are more customer friendly and support different types of graphic data. As a result, many such graphics displays are utilized to show the sales data as well as additional graphics data such as detailed instructions and commercials.
Although the graphics displays provide easy and friendly support to the customer, most current fuel dispensers do not have the capability for graphics data. Furthermore, incorporating a new graphics display into an older, conventional fuel dispenser system is very difficult. The difficulty lies in interfacing the conventional dispenser system with a multimedia controller for driving the graphics display. The conventional fuel dispenser system typically includes an external point-of-sale ("POS") controller and a fuel dispenser with various electronics including a credit card reader/ printer, an electronics display and a pump controller. Communications between the POS controller and the dispenser electronics are achieved using a customer activated terminal located inside the dispenser.
Currently, there are two solutions for incorporating a new multimedia controller into a conventional fuel dispenser system. The first solution replaces the original POS controller with the new multimedia controller. The multimedia controller not only takes on the duties of the original POS controller, but controls the graphics display as well. The second solution provides a new multimedia controller that works in conjunction with the POS controller. The multimedia controller in this solution attempts to intercept and insert data communications between the POS controller and the customer activated terminal. The multimedia controller uses the intercepted data for the graphics display and then inserts additional data for the POS controller.
The above mentioned prior solutions have many drawbacks. In the first solution, replacing the original POS controller with a multimedia controller is difficult because there are many different models of POS controller, as well as many different programs running on the POS controllers. In addition, the POS controller communicates with many different credit card/debit card networks. Therefore, the replacement multimedia controller has to be knowledgeable and adaptable to all the different potential POS controllers. Another drawback is that the multimedia controller now has an increased work load because the multimedia controller must also perform all the tasks of the old POS controller. In the second solution, inserting and intercepting the data to and from the original POS controller requires the multimedia controller to sift through and correctly interpret a great deal of data that is communicated between the POS controller and the customer activated terminal. Most of the data is directly related to the conventional operation of the fuel dispenser, and therefore not needed by the multimedia controller. Another drawback for both of the solutions is that there are some activities that go on in the dispenser that some models of POS controllers do not control. For example, when a credit card is inserted into the credit card reader/printer, the customer activated terminal sends back the message to remove the credit card without notifying the POS controller. Finally, the above two prior solutions make retrofitting an existing fuel dispenser into one with multimedia a very tedious, expensive, and time consuming job.
Another problem associated with the graphics display in fuel dispensers is the lack of interactivity between the customer and the commercials or instructions. As for the commercials, conventional graphics displays show a series of text, picture or full motion advertisements, hereinafter commercials, that are running on a continuous loop. As a result, when the customer arrives at the fuel dispenser, he often starts in the middle of a commercial. In addition, the subject matter of the commercials may not be of any interest to the customer, thereby eliminating the benefit of the graphics display for that customer. As for the instructions, it is difficult to balance the amount of instructions needed for a first time customer who has never used the fuel dispenser and a regular customer who wants to get in and out quickly without wasting time on instructions that he does not need.
Furthermore, the interaction between the customer and conventional fuel dispensers is somewhat limited. For example, modern electronic displays may advertise the car wash service, notifying the customer that the car wash can be purchased by pushing a keypad on the dispenser. But this level of interaction only has limited effectiveness. For example, the responses from the customer are typically limited to "yes" or "no" type responses due to the limited space for the keypad. Also, the use of the keypad is confusing, and often generates incorrect responses. Furthermore, if the customer is a repeat customer, he must repeatedly be shown the same commercials and instructions.
Therefore, what is needed is an interactive graphics interface that may be easily incorporated into an existing fuel dispenser.
Furthermore, what is needed an interactive graphics interface for allowing the customer to have some level of control over the commercials and level of instruction.
Furthermore, what is needed is an interactive graphics interface for providing the commercials responsive to the customer interactions and other variables.